By the assistance of the most High, at whose will the tongues of children become eloquent, and who often reveals to babes what He hides from the wise, this renowned book, the Catholicon, was printed and perfected in the year of Incarnation 1460, in the beloved city of Mentz (which belongs to the illustrious German nation, and which God has consented to prefer and to raise with such an exalted light of the mind and of free grace, above the other nations of the earth), not by means of pen, or pencil, or stencil plate, but by the admirable proportion, harmony and connection of the punches and matrices.[1] Wherefore to thee, Divine Father, Son and Holy Ghost, triune and only God, let praise and honor be given, and let those who never forget to praise [the Virgin] Mary, join also through this book in the universal anthem of the Church. God be praised.
Fac-simile of the Types of the Catholicon of 1460.
[From Bernard.]
- ↑ In Germany, the punch or the model letter is known as the patrice, a word obviously derived from the root of the Latin patronarum of the text. The reversed duplicates of punches, here translated as matrices, are noticed in the text as formarum, a variation of the word form, which we find so often in the record of the Strasburg trial. "The admirable proportion, harmony and connection of the punches and matrices," should be understood, not as a commendation of the beauty of the printed letters, but as a specification by the inventor of what he conceived was the great feature of typography, the making of types of different faces and thickness on bodies of absolute uniformity, so that they could be combined with ease. It should be noticed that the invention or the use of isolated letters or types is not boasted of; it was the method of making the types which the inventor regarded as the most admirable feature of his invention.
